Elder Jake Roush's Madagascar Adventures: December 30, 2013

December 30, 2013

Okay so first of all YES i know i'm sending like efatra amin'ny folo pictures but let's be real.. You people love seeing my face. Okay at least mom, dad and Elder drewseph smith do :) hahaha. So yeah Christmas in madasgascar. Well it happened i'll definitely remember it for the rest of my life! Tuesday (christmas eve) was pretty good! We went to a christmas choir done by some of the youth at the ampefiloha church, which is a huge orange church ahha it's pretty sick! But we went with one of our investigators, Andry so that was cool. It was a good concert and then we went back to the office with the AP's so we could take some missionaries their packages cause all the packages came in late on p day so people couldn't get them! Then we journeyed home to make our big christmas eve dinner cause we wouldn't have time on Christmas! There were 3 companionships in our house so each companionship made a loaka (rice topping) we made a crap ton of rice and had an awesome christmas dinner!! Then we may or may not have brought our mattreses all into the ap's living room and had a mini sleepover!! super fun! Then Christmas morning we woke up and opened our packages! For the day we planned to go to our ward christmas party, do service then skype the fam. Well the ward christmas party was good, ahah it was supposed to go form 9 to 5 but we got there at 10 and left at like 12 to go to lunch with the ap's and anjanahary elders... malagasy chinese food! Then we tried to go and do service.. and all like 7981237981273 of our ideas fell through.. super frustrating! So then we decided! Oh! We should go street boarding (contacting on the street with a big poster board.) And there was a posterboard in the office, but we didn't have our keys.. so we called the elder of the office couple and asked for his keys.. he told us street boarding was allowed and made a joke that we didn't have enough insurance for that... what? ahaha. so then the ap's called president and i guess elder cloward (office couple man) thought we meant we were gonna go longboarding...! Hahaha so yeah... that was pretty funny. Didn't ever go contactin cause we had to try to figure out skype in the office! there were 4 elders that were going to use 4 computers and only two of the computers worked... hahaha so yeah. that happened. BUT finally i got to see all of your beautiful faces and get SUPER weirded out by how much you people changed. but really. FREAKED me out haha. So yeah that was christmas. It was good and i'll definitely remember it forever haha. In other news we are now down to 2 elders in our house and the ap's still below us cause there was an emergency transfer.. so now my buddy elder hardy is in a different area and the house is lonely! So lonely we put sunglasses on a pineapple i bought and made him our new roommate. It's kinda been one of those weeks! It's been super slow this week, maybe the slowest of my mission. At first cause we were looking forward to christmas and then cause it was just a hard week after haha. As far as the work goes it was a pretty slow week to start but i think we closed out pretty strong. On thursday we had a cool experience and it got even better yesterday! We were tracting and having no success and were pretty discouraged cause it was a bit of a poopy day.. so then we were walking and we see a pocadot wall with an arrow that's pointing to a couple houses... so i thought what the heck, nothings working.. let's go for it and went for it! First house we odio'd (we don't knock, we say odio haha) and they let us in! It was a young family and we got another return time.. Yesterday we taught them again and we found out they had learned before and the guy was wanting to learn more about that "joseph smith guy" cause the apostasy thing made sense... WHAT? #sick hahah the Lord works in mysterious ways. Definitely a breath of fresh air. We also are progressing super well with some of the sisters investigators they gave us, it's nice getting new investigators without having to find them haha. Also thursday we knocked into the biggest house i'd ever seen in mada... and got in! Turns out the guy just wanted us to give his workers at his house a spiritual thought and that was it.. cause they needed a church and he already had his catholicism... what a saint... haha. Well... Don't know what else to tell y'all. Yesterday we had a really good day just teaching some members and having some great spiritual lessons. We talked about studying the scriptures and making goals. With some of the families i asked them to commit to read everyday this new year. In the malagasy book of mormon if you read 2 1/2 pages every day.. you'll finish it by the end of the year. So that's a goal i'm making too.. By the end of this year. Finishing the malgasy book of mormon this year by reading 2 1/2 pages every day. I also challenge all of you to make goals for the new year. Whether it's spiritually with the book of mormon or whatever. DO IT! Anyways i think that's all there is to the week, i guess i'll write yall next year ;) haha funny new year jokes. #classic. Anyways i love you all and remember to tratra the new year!!! and don't forget to smile :)

Am-pitiavana,